RUSSIAN GENTLEMAN TRAVELING: S. D. NECHAEV’S 1820S TRAVELS | |||
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Year | 2016 | Number | 2(51) |
Pages | 71-78 | Type | scientific article |
UDC | 94(470)”18” | BBK | 63.3(2)521. |
Authors | Shkerin Vladimir A. |
Topic | ANTROPOLOGY OF TRAVEL |
Summary | The study is focused on the traveler’s Stepan Nechaev personality and the effects of two journeys made in the 1820s on this personality’s growth. Despite their chronological proximity these two journeys differed significantly in a number of important characteristics. Nechaev traveled to the Caucasus in 1823 as a private person with the purpose of ethnographic studies and collecting material for his essays about this little-known region. The author hoped that these publications would earn him literary fame. A trip to the Ural was made in 1826–1827 in his official capacity, and his travel notes were not intended for publication but served as the materials for drafting reports to the authorities. In the Ural Nechaev studied the Old Believers and religious dissenters, and his future career in the Synod depended on the success of this mission. General political situation in the country also changed. The first trip was made during the liberal reign of Alexander I, while the second one fell on the troubled times after the defeat of the Decembrists’ mutiny when young Tsar Nicolay I was inclined to suspect secret societies’ activities everywhere. Nechaev was also earlier a member of one of such societies and was on friendly terms with K. Ryleev, A. Bestuzhev and other Decembrists, and even fell himself under suspicion of the gendarmes. However the three months spent in the Ural saved him from prosecution. | ||
Keywords | Travel, traveling notes, travelogue, literature of travel, S. D. Nechayev, movement of Decembrists, Caucasus, Urals, Old Believers, sectarians, first half of the 19th century | ||
References |
Бейтуганов С. Н. Кабарда: история и фамилии. Нальчик: Эльбрус, 2007. 784 с. |
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